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My Story

Hi, I'm Zebulon Thomas

I didn’t write this book after I healed.

I wrote it during the healing.

I was in EMDR therapy, session after session, finally processing what I’d spent decades surviving.

Some of the memories were violent. Some were silent.

Some shattered my body. Some I still can’t fully name.

But in each chapter, I chose to stay.

I chose to feel what I couldn’t feel before.

I chose to speak, even when the words shook.

And that’s what Out of Fight or Flight became.

I’m a trauma survivor, author, and speaker who spent most of my life in survival mode.

I grew up in a home where violence wasn’t rare — it was the rhythm of daily life. I endured years of abuse, moments where I truly believed I wouldn’t survive. My mother once pointed a gun at me. I watched my parents threaten suicide. I was forced to fight my own brother. I blamed myself for my sister’s seizures. And for a long time, I buried it all. That’s how I learned to survive.

But survival isn’t healing.

When I finally began EMDR therapy, I didn’t expect what would happen next. Session by session, I returned to those memories — the ones I had locked away. I shook. I screamed. I dissociated. I rewired. And little by little, I began to reclaim my life. I wasn’t just surviving anymore. I was healing.

That journey became my memoir, Out of Fight or Flight — a cinematic, chapter-by-chapter reflection of what trauma really feels like… and what healing actually looks like.

Now, I speak to share what I’ve learned. I speak for survivors like me. I speak to honor the counselors who stayed with me through the darkest work of my life. And I speak so others can find their own path forward — one truth, one memory, one breath at a time.

“I didn’t just survive. I went back for the boy trauma tried to destroy — and I brought him home.”

Why I Wrote This

🌀 To put language to what so many survivors go through but can’t say

🌀 To show the real shape of EMDR therapy — the emotions, the breakthroughs, the body

🌀 To give other trauma survivors something I never had: a book that felt safe, real, and raw

🌀 To honor the counselors who sat with me in the fire — and never flinched (So Grateful. Saved my Life.)

🌀 To say: “You’re not too much. You’re not broken. And you’re not alone.”

Faith. Survival. And Finding Safety.

I wasn’t raised in faith.

In fact, I was raised in fear of it all.

But two Christian counselors sat with me in the darkest parts of my story — with kindness, integrity, and no agenda.

They didn’t “fix” me. They didn’t preach.

They just stayed.

That’s the kind of faith I’ve begun to believe in:

Not the one that explains suffering — but the one that holds it.

On the back of this book, you’ll see a vine and dove. It’s a quiet symbol of that holding.

This Book Is Just the Beginning

I created this website, not just to share a book — but to build a trauma-informed space.

A place where survivors can breathe.

Where counselors and therapists can learn.

Where people can come to understand what trauma really is — and how healing happens, one session at a time.

If you're here, you're part of that space now.

Thank you for coming this far with me.

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